


In You, The Beauty of the World

by Lady_Vibeke



Series: A Thin Red Line Between Stubborn Spirits [9]
Category: The Mandalorian (TV)
Genre: Cara Dune is a Softie, Cute Kids, Din Djarin is a Softie, Domestic Fluff, F/M, Family Feels, Gen, Love, Proud and Loving Parents, Sleepy Cuddles, Tooth-Rotting Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-23
Updated: 2020-04-23
Packaged: 2021-03-01 19:01:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,060
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23801992
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lady_Vibeke/pseuds/Lady_Vibeke
Summary: "This is not a bed,” she grumbles to Din. “This is a damn playground. So much for our lazy cuddles."Din puts an end to the tickling battle by pulling the two children apart and sitting both down on his lap. Cara takes the three of them in, panting and flushed and dishevelled, and shakes her head indulgently. She just needs to accept she and Din seriously need to start dropping the kids off to Auntie Kaunis in order to get some proper intimacy."I told you we should sell them off to that grumpy lady at the market.”"We need to fatten them up first,” replies Din, curling his arms around the children's bellies. “Witha lotof blumfruit muffins.""Sounds like a plan,” Cara agrees. She playfully pokes a finger in Vodi's and Shari's sides. “Who's hungry, again?"
Relationships: Baby Yoda (The Mandalorian TV) & Cara Dune & The Mandalorian (The Mandalorian TV), Cara Dune/The Mandalorian (The Mandalorian TV)
Series: A Thin Red Line Between Stubborn Spirits [9]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1579576
Comments: 22
Kudos: 166





	In You, The Beauty of the World

**Author's Note:**

> This is so full of fluff and family cuteness you're going to feel sick, but I needed some softness and, boy, did I write it!
> 
> This is sheer, pure, pointless fluff, I warn you. It's short and has absolutely no other purpose than giving these two idiots some soft time together (though it might not be exactly what they initially planned...)
> 
> Title from Kuolema Tekee Taiteilijan by Nightwish.

It's the soft touch of her husband's lips upon her shoulders that rouses Cara from her sleep.

She stirs lazily as a smile tugs at her lips in the wake of the kisses Din is trailing up her neck. He stops under her ear, smiles, then kisses her cheek, her mouth. Outside, the morning light is pale and warm.

“Hey,” Din greets her while her eyes flutter open, blinking what's left of her sleep away.

Cara purrs, huddling closer when he wraps an arm around her waist and seeks another kiss.

“Hey.”

The house is blissfully silent. The bed is a warm cocoon. Din keeps kissing her, slow, gentle brushes that make Cara squirm in delight.

“I didn't mean to wake you,” he mutters, and Cara lets out a muffled snicker.

“Liar.”

“You know me too well.”

She cups his face into one hand and tugs him down into another kiss. Sighing happily, Din obliges, shifting above her with his whole torso as the kiss deepens and grows hungrier.

Cara spreads a knee out and presses it against his side, her foot rubbing suggestively along his thigh.

“We could be _very_ quiet...” she whispers in his ear in a husky tone that she knows he can't resist.

Predictably, Din groans into her mouth and rests his forehead against hers with a clipped pant.

“How long do you think we have before-”

The wailing erupting for the cot across the room spares Din the trouble of finishing the sentence. He collapses against her chest and smothers a frustrated laugh into her neck. Cara laughs, too, because she just _knew_ this peace and quiet was doomed to end too soon. It _never_ lasts.

"I'll get her."

Din presses one more kiss to her temple, then throws his half of the sheets aside and gets up.

"Thanks,” says Cara, wiggling up into a sitting position. She watches Din bend down into the cot and pick up their daughter with a big, adoring grin painted across his face. Tahti stops wailing as soon as she's in her father's arms, but she's still fussing, making those whiny, weak noises that they've learned to identify quite precisely, by now. She's just five weeks old, but she's very good at conveying her needs.

Din returns to the bed without taking his eyes from the baby for a single second. There is so much love in his look Cara almost tears up; she's still hormonal and hates not having any control over her own emotional reactions, but she has a feeling this sense of overwhelming fondness will never go away. It's been there for years, after all.

Din sits at her side. Tahti's fussing ceases the very moment she sees Cara; her little face brightens up with something like a smile, funny and toothless, that quickly infects both Cara and Din.

"Guess who's hungry?" he says as he places the little girl in her mother's waiting arms.

“Hey, sunshine,” coos Cara with a grin as big as Din's. “You're up early, today."

She takes her, adjusts her against her chest, then undoes a few buttons of her shirt and moves it out of the way to let the baby latch.

Din takes his pillow and puts it under her elbow to help her support the child's weight. Cara thanks him with a quick peck on his lips.

"Why do all our kids have the appetite of a black hole?" she wonders as they both observe Tahti gulp down her milk like there is no tomorrow. She was born too soon and they were very worried about her for a few days, but her rapid weight gain soon shied all worries away.

Din's hand comes up to rest upon Cara's, which is tenderly cupped around the baby's head; his thumb strokes Cara's thumb, then reverently ghosts over the light, thin hair behind his daughter's ear.

He smirks.

"They don't take it after me, you know?"

Cara elbows him indignantly.

"Kriff you!”

The door cracks open. They keep their attention trained on Tahti, pretending not to notice the scutter of little bare feet and the very badly stifled giggles coming from under the bed.

"I have a feeling we're not alone," she whispers to Din, loud enough to be heard by the intruders hiding beneath them.

"That's impossible,” says Din with an exaggerated emphasis on the _impossible._ He slowly crawls to the edge of the bed and starts leaning down with an impish grin. He becomes such a child around the kids.

“We'd definitely notice if someone sneaked into our bedroom and hid under the-"

"Boo!"

Shari and Vodi creep out from under the bed in a crazy fit of giggles and Din takes both his hands to his chest, in the most embarrassing display of shock Cara has ever seen. She can't help laughing along with the children as they climb their way onto the bed. Four-year-old Shari is tall enough to manage on her own; fifty-seven-year-old Vodi is still as small as when Din found him, but his sister is always ready to help him out, even when he doesn't actually need any help: he's learning to use his powers more quickly than he's learning to speak.

"Easy, easy!” scolds Cara, half laughing, when they both fling themselves at her to kiss her good morning. Vodi was always a handful but as Shari grew up and developed her _intense_ personality he started getting bolder, too. Cara can only hope Tahti will inherit Din's mild character, otherwise they're all screwed.

After clumsily smooching Cara all over her face and placing a couple of very attentive kisses on top of their baby sister's head, the kids turn their turbulent affection to Din, who welcomes them in his arms with a breathless _oof_ as they both land against his chest with their very personal idea of a loving hug.

“What are you two doing up and about?" he asks from under a tangle of little arms and legs. Shari's dark hair is all over his face; one of Vodi's ears ends up in his mouth while he laughs.

Cara's heart swells. She glances down at the little bundle nestled against her bosom, suckling her milk with those faint, happy sounds, her dark lashes fluttering from time to time over her rosy cheeks. Cara shares a look with Din; they smile. It's amazing how their whole world fits in this bed.

"Tahti is awake,” Shari is saying in that shrewd tone of hers that never fails to make her parents roll their eyes. “So we can be awake!"

"I don't remember this rule," Din objects with a funny frown, to which Shari simply responds with a shrug.

"I just made it."

Cara forbids herself to laugh. Din's eyes, glittering with amusement, meet hers as he shakes his head and grumbles:

"You're too much like your mother."

Cara chuckles inwardly at this: he never quite seems to manage to make it sound like a complaint.

Shari _is_ very much like Cara, not only in the looks: she's stubborn, and cheeky, and way too clever for her age.

Din's observation makes Shari turn in his arms and take his face into her hands. She squeezes him until his lips poke out as she says:

"Because I'm sooo beautiful?"

"Also because of that,” Din concedes with another meaningful glance toward Cara.

"And Vodi is just like you!" Shari adds.

Din arches his brows and gazes down at Vodi, wrapped in his other arm, getting a toothy simper in return.

"Is he?"

Cara can tell by the mischief in Shari's look that she's about to fire one of her sassy lines.

"Because he has wrinkles!"

This time, Cara just can't hold back her laughter. She tries to control the shake of her shoulders, holding Tahti a little more firmly not to disturb her nursing, and Din somehow has the nerve to look outraged before he, too, bursts out laughing with the rest of them.

"She's definitely too much like you,” he groans at Cara. “Alright,” he adds then. He lets go of the children and taps his thighs. “Sit down here, you two. Let Mama feed Tahti and then we can-”

"I want to be next to Mama!” Shari protests, and, as usual, Vodi grugles in agreement.

Din feigns a hurt expression. "Nobody wants me?"

“You're not soft, Papa!”

“But I'm stronger.”

“No, you're not!”

Cara has to clasp a hand over her mouth to conceal the shameless smug chuckle pulling at her lips. Din casts her a surreptitious smirk before burying his face into his hands with a miserable sigh.

“Nobody loves me.”

“Papa!”

Both Shari and Vodi throw themselves at him, giggling at his silliness like the pair of brats they are. Din takes them back into his arms, giggling with them; it's a sound Cara will never tire of – her children's laughter and her husband's filling the room and every single inch of her soul.

Soon it will be ten years since she met a shiny Mandalorian and his green kid in a quiet cantina on an ever quieter planet. Sometimes it feels like it was yesterday. Sometimes it's like it was someone else's life, because it seems impossible that there used to be a time when she and Din were _not_ together.

Vodi starts pawing at Din's shirt, looking up at him very pointedly.

"Vodi says he's hungry and he wants blumfruit muffins,” Shari conveys.

She's always been strongly bonded with her brother; it took them a few years to realise their connection was so strong because she, too, has the same powers he has. It wasn't easy to accept, at first, but it soon came in handy to have a child who could voice her brother's thoughts when he still couldn't. It's been saving Cara and Din a lot of trouble, though sometimes their young interpreter gets a little too much liberty with the translations.

"Are you _really_ sure the blumfruit muffin part comes from Vodi?" Din asks suspiciously.

Shari's eyes don't bear a single hint of hesitation.

"Yes!"

"Shall we ask him?"

"Nooo!”

The kids break out into another mad giggling fit as Din starts tickling them everywhere.

Cara strokes Tahti's head with a soft, helpless sigh.

"This is not a bed,” she grumbles to Din. “This is a damn playground. So much for our lazy cuddles."

Din puts an end to the tickling battle by pulling the two children apart and sitting both down on his lap. Cara takes the three of them in, panting and flushed and dishevelled, and shakes her head indulgently. She just needs to accept she and Din seriously need to start dropping off the kids to Auntie Kaunis in order to get some proper intimacy.

"I told you we should sell them off to that grumpy lady at the market.”

"We need to fatten them up first,” replies Din, curling his arms around the children's bellies. “With _a lot_ of blumfruit muffins."

"Sounds like a plan,” Cara agrees. She playfully pokes a finger in Vodi's and Shari's sides. “Who's hungry, again?"

Shari pulls her brother into her arms.

"You can't sell us!"

"Why not?" asks Din.

Shari throws her head back to shoot up a toothless grin at him.

"Because you love us sooo much!"

Cara and Din snort in unison. No one ever warned them that the most difficult side of parenting was having exceptionally clever children.

"They're too smart, Din,” says Cara, trying not to sound too obnoxiously proud. “We can't beat them."

Her eyes and his lock, and she finds them same pride in them.

"No, I guess we can't,” he muses, then looks down at them and gives their bellies a rub. “You know what they say: when you can't beat them...”

“Sell them?” Cara offers, making Shari and Vodi break into yet another giggle.

“Mama!”

She and Din smile at each other.

 _How did we get here?,_ they're wondering once again.

They may not know for sure – there was spotchka and an AT-ST, people to help, battles to fight – but it doesn't really matter, today.

They've built all of this together – this life, this family, this _happiness_ – with patience and love, and even though sometimes they still feel like they may not deserve it, they certainly have earned it.

This is _theirs._

They wouldn't want it any other way.

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you didn't die from the sugar load!
> 
> There will be a prequel to this, one day. It's sitting in my drafts folder, I'll get to it some day. :)
> 
> Make me happy and drop a comment, yeah?
> 
> P.S. Tähti means Star in Finnish. It's important, you'll se when I post the prequel to this. ;)


End file.
